Materials – Sector Architecture & Interiors

By Robert van Rixtel12-03-2019

One Week About Materials, curated by MaterialDistrict

Sector ArchitectureAmbassadeurs: Ben van Berkel and Filippo Lodi

What do you think are the most important material innovations within your sector of architecture and why?There are currently some amazing composites being developed that have enormous strength. These materials are very exciting for the design and construction industries and I believe they will become increasingly important in the not too distant future.

How do we build in 100 years if it were up to you?I believe that in the upcoming decades we will be building much more with circular materials and will be much more mindful of where we use certain materials in buildings. Using technologies like BIM, we can very efficiently relocate materials when we need to re-use buildings or their components. This means that we can significantly reduce our use of raw materials. But there are also new techniques being developed for producing artificial materials such as stone, marble and concrete from waste materials. New chemical strategies have shown that we can even produce meat through certain molecular reactions, so why can’t we do the same thing with more building materials? I hope this will become a reality, as it would mean that we would not be using up our natural supplies, we would instead be promoting circularity and energy neutrality and would be producing and using materials in much more intelligent and efficient ways.

Sector InteriorsAmbassadeurs: Niels van Eijk & Miriam van der Lubbe

What do you think are the most important material innovations within your sector of interior and why?The development of sustainable production and laying as little claim as possible on fossil fuels is an important and absolutely necessary development. The most important innovation in that is our collective consciousness that sustainability is essential. Designers play an important role in that. They translate idea and demand into materialization, so they lay claim to raw materials. The care with which they do that is of the utmost importance. But it is also a struggle. When using sustainable materials, there will always be a discussion, with questions like, how much is it allowed to cost, how much trouble may it cause for the production process, how do you burden the consumer?

The development of biobased material is now hot, like the cradle-to-cradle development was important before that, and ecodesign before that. Every time frame has its own consciousness of producing sustainably. As creator, whether you’re a designer, architect or product designer, you have to feel responsible and be conscious, taking a step to improve sustainability. There has to be an evolution in that.